Provide or receive remote help

Sometimes it’s my mom, or someone having trouble setting their their SDI-12 USB adapters, I always find it necessary to provide remote help on computers. Luckily there are tools to do that. Dell has its own version where their tech just take control of your mouse and keyboard (a bit scary at first) and other companies have similar ones. If you’re finding yourself needing to provide or receive remote help on computers, I recommend teamviewer:

https://www.teamviewer.us/

You can use it free of charge to provide help on a non-commercial basis (read their terms). You don’t have to worry about network firewalls regular people have on their home router and having to find the correct IP address on the target computer. Teamviewer solves all those problems for you by giving each computer a phone-number-like 9-digit number so the person seeking help can give to the helper. There is also a one-time password that can be given to the helper for one-use only. The password changes after each use or you can refresh it manually. If it’s your mom, you will likely help her set up a permanent access:

Go to “Extra” then “Options” and find the following dialog:

Select “Security” and set a personal password so you can always log on to your mom’s computer using the 9-digit number and this password as long as she has turned on her computer and has internet connection.

Besides poking around the remote computer, you can send files back and forth, talk/text chat to the person on the other computer, do some screen share etc. There are lots of features that you might find useful. Besides, you can run this software on win/Linux/Mac and raspberry pi (Linux version is eval. and has no file transfer features as of the writing of this post).